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In this video, I want to talk to you about bandsaw accessories, so things you can get to make
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your bandsaw work better. None of these are really necessary because any bandsaw you buy is going
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to come ready to cut in some fashion right out of the box. But to get the most out of your machine
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you might want to consider some of these accessories. But anyway, let's just start with the first
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thing. And it's not really an accessory, but I do want to point out that you should have a variety
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of blades on hand. And by a variety I mean the smallest that your machine can use and the largest
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because the blade determines what you can do with the machine. It really doesn't make sense to
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wait for the need to arise and then have to wait for another week or so for the blade to get
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to you after you order it. You really should have a stock of blades on hand and right here I have a
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3.16th inch, a quarter inch skip tooth, which is a great general purpose blade. It's this one here
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Quarter inch skip tooth. It's missing every second tooth to leave some room for sawdust to build up and not bind and burn
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On the machine itself is a 5 eighths inch wide blade, which is
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excellent for re-sawing and heavy-duty cutting through thick material and slightly curved parts too
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So that would be the very first thing In fact you should probably buy a bunch of blades when you buy your saw It going to come with a blade probably just one but you going to want to have more so that you can just use your band saw for whatever comes up
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Another thing to consider is a fence. This is a very impressive bandsaw, and it came with this great fence, but some bandsaws don't come with a fence
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And a fence is very helpful for you to do straight cuts and different things like that
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But this fence came with it. There are many aftermarket fences that work well on different band saws
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Another thing is miter gauge. This saw did not come with a miter gauge, but
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miter gauge essentially allows you to do a quick cross-cutting, you know, also at different angles
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So the nice thing about miter gauges is they're kind of standard. So this one will fit my table saw. It'll fit this band saw. It'll fit another number of machines that I have
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in my shop because the slot width on myter gauges is consistent. So that's another thing to get
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I really like this here. This work light. It's magnetized, so it can go here. You can pull it off
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depending on what you're cutting and where you've got a fence. A light like this is super valuable
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Not for every cut. I mean, if you're re-sawing, you're, and you following a fence You don really need to see a pencil line closely But if you doing precise curved cuts the ability to see exactly where you cutting is crucial
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Because in a situation like that, you're really aiming for precision right down to splitting a pencil line
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And you need to be able to see for that. So can't beat one of those things. Now this is an example of aftermarket blade support bearings
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Now as I said, this is an excellent machine and it comes with bearings that support the blade
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and you can't get any better than this. There's no aftermarket system that's better than what you've got here stock
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The blade is fully supported, nice big bearings, easy to adjust. But not every machine is like that, especially the lower end machines
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They tend to have low friction blocks. so it's not a bearing that rolls, it's actually a block that the blade rubs against
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And I mean, that works. That works fine. But you're going to get better performance from aftermarket bearings
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Let me just show you quickly what an aftermarket bearing setup would look like
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I have another bandsaw, and it was more of an economy model
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and it had the friction blocks, low friction blocks. So I upgraded to the bearings, and you know, you can see here what they look like
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It pretty much like what you see here on the stock on this saw but it just ups the performance a little bit too One last thing I really like this for my shop because my shop isn big enough that i can just have a dedicated spot for the band
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saw i need to move it in and out as i'm using it and this mobile base here did not come stock
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with this saw but it is made by the company that makes the saw so the beauty of this is that when
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the saw is sitting on the ground it's pretty much as stable as
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if it didn't have the wheel kit. But when you activate this foot pedal, now you're driving the
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band saw on three wheels. There's this wheel here and then there's the two wheels at the back
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and maneuverability is quite good. So definitely worthwhile. There's different styles. There are
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universal wheel kits, too, that form a kind of a, almost like a little low trolley that the saw
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sits into and then others like these that are meant for this machine but except perhaps for the
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blades and the light you might want to use your bandsaw for a little while if a band saw is new to you
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just see what kind of accessories make sense as i always say there's there's nothing quite like
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struggling with a less than ideal situation for a while to educate you to understand what a good
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in this case accessory would be so you don't waste your money and you can make
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proper buying decisions. So that's the Bansaw accessory story in a nutshell